


Cadet Jean Reporting For Duty

by Kirakombat



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-18
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-04-04 23:31:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,199
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4157097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirakombat/pseuds/Kirakombat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He sees the girl. He sees the war. He feels his deaths.<br/>Jean is starting to have weird dreams that revolve around different time periods and their main war. The only thing they all have in common is that before the shooting gallery happens he gets a glimpse of peace in the embodiment of a mystery girl. He was never a history buff but with his college doing a musical called Marguerite, he can't help but get a sense of déjà vu.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 00:00

**Author's Note:**

> It's a WIP, loosely based on a lot of other similar AUs that people have come up it  
> ____________  
> Note: I went back and edited a few minor things

There were always a few things Jean would realize when he wakes up in the middle of the night.

It was always the same time, always the same jerk reaction, and always the same girl. The only thing that would change was the war.

  
Always a different war.

He wouldn’t remember most of the dream, more like nightmare, but the war and girl were always prominent. There was one time where he dreamt he would be zooming around on what seemed like grappling hooks around giant humans with no genitals. They would stomp around with the dopiest of looks on their face but still cause a lot of damage to anything within their reach. He'd remember the the weight of the gear as it would dig into his skin as he suddenly changed direction. Could feel the sting of a new wound forming as he would skid on the ground with a few jumps as if he were a stone skipping on water for shits and giggles until he would come to a complete stop. As he would be getting up from the ground a pair of legs would stop in front of him. The girl would appear then and urge him to move his ass or else fall prey to the enemy. She'd help him dust off, give him a quick hug and then zoom off on her own gear. Next thing he'd remember would be getting knocked out of a tree he would be taking refuge in by a giant arm he hadn't notice and land on the ground. Breaking his leg in the process by landing on top of his gear.  Jean would just be sitting up from finally catching his breath when he would hear his name being yelled out bloody murder and then looking up to seeing a foot closing in on him fast.

Jean would wake up at that point, chest heaving. His forehead would be sweaty and he'd have to mentally will himself to free one of his hands that were clutching his blankets for dear life just to wipe off his face. 

Tonight was just the same. He dream started off normally where he would be getting off a boat with a bunch of men onto a beach. Well as normal as it could be with a bunch of men in uniform anyways. But then it'd take a turn for the worse as he’d hurry to run behind some kind of metal protection as hails of what he knew to be bullets would rain around him. The yells of his fellow comrades being pierced with the shrapnel a constant echo in his ears. He would turn his head and see his brother-in-arms sitting next to him. Further down the beach he'd see other soldiers hiding behind sand dunes. It wasn't raining but it sure seemed that way as the bullets would pierce the ground making the sand and water delodge itself from where it laid. Looking towards the water he would see his friend, a nervous boy straight out of training, trying to find cover any way he possibly could. But to no avail. Jean yelled at him to stay down but the odds were against him. The sounds of exploding weapons drowned him out. Just as the freckle faced kid would have reached Jean, a bullet managed to lodge itself into him. The boy's body would slowly crumple in on itself and Jean would gradually leave the safety that the metal contraption gave him just to be there. 

As he reached the body that was already oozing out blood, too much blood for any nonthreatening wound, he tried to call for a medic. No one could have heard him. The macabre music of death drowning out everything in the area. That's when he felt a sting in his side. It had felt like a mosquito bite to him, As he would be looking down, Jean would have seen what would be a medium sized red circle starting to appear on his uniform. Only for it to gradually grow in size and deepen in color. Due to his apparent blood-loss, Jean would start to hallucinate. He'd see a girl with auburn hair and the reddest red lips to have ever been. She'd give him a disappointed look even though he couldn't see her eyes clearly. He couldn't have seen anything clearly by that point anyways if he were to be honest with himself. He'd remember her saying that he was supposed to come back to her, that he broke his promise. He would have apologized to thin air if in the next instant he wasn't hit by another bullet right in the chest.  
  
He’d wake up with a jerk. Sweat coming from his forehead as his heart would be beating a thousand beats per second. He’d take in gulps of air to try and calm himself only to get lightheaded and have to stop.

  
But it was in those moments of clarity that Jean would truly try remember her. Or at least a vague image of her. She wouldn’t look the same, her outfit and hairstyle would be different depending on the time period but he knew it was the same girl from all his other dreams. The color of her hair was always the same milk chocolaty auburn it ever was. It was a weird color combination but it worked somehow. Worked for her. And the way she would call his name, as if she would never see him again which would usually cause a slight twinge within his chest.

God, his dreams. They were really fucked up if you asked him. They didn’t start to happen until one night a few weeks ago when Eren had convinced him to watch some war movie. Saving Ryan’s Privates or something along those lines. He'd always made a point to stay away from historical war films because they'd always give him nightmares but Eren had insisted they watch that night stating that it was his turn to pick the movie for their biweekly group movie night. He didn’t think much of it, though anything war related had always struck a chord with him deep down. He just figured it was something everyone had to deal with. Not with war specifically but some kind of trigger. .

  
Heaving a sigh for having more questions than answers, Jean turned his head to look at the alarm clock on the drawer next to his bed. Glowering at the bright red letters Jean had to wait a moment for his eyes to adjust to the offending light. It read 4:07 am April 7th, he turned over and wrapped himself in his blanket. It was his birthday. Great. His only wish for now would be to not dream for what little time he had left before he actually had to be up for his first class of the day.


	2. 01:00

7 am classes.  
  
     What made him believe that signing up for 7 am classes was a fucking great idea. Who let him sign up for this shit? There was no godly reason for this to be a thing. It wasn’t like he needed this class. All that much at least. He’d heard good things about Professor Hanji. She was very energetic for so early in the morning. Jean had been tempted to drop her class earlier in the semester but since this was an elective and he’d somehow managed to keep the A- he’d obtained, he figured he might as well stay.  
  
‘ _But at what cost_ ,’he thought to himself as he rubbed the sleep from his eyes.  
  
     Jean grumpily managed to walk through the mostly silent corridors of Trost University with little interaction as possible. He pushed the remnants of his dream to the back of his mind as he’d done the past few weeks. Each dream leaving him feeling a bit empty on the inside. An unknown feeling with an unknown solution to fix it.  
  
     The morning chill in the air cutting through to the bone, Jean pulled his sweater closer to him all the while longing to just head back to his dorm and letting his bed suffocate him with its warmth. As he was getting ready, the imprint he had left within the covers kept calling him like a siren calls to the sailors before she kills them. He almost gave into the temptation until the alarm on his phone went off and he’d manage to escape the sweet call of sleep.  
  
     Somehow, Jean was able to make it to his class a few minutes before it started. Art Appreciation wasn’t a horrible class. He liked the subject matter and he got along fine with the rest of the class. The class project they had to do earlier in the year lead to a big class discussion which lead to everyone opening up to one another. The result lead to a surprisingly pleasant rest of the semester.  
  
     Sliding into his designated, though not technically designated seat, and placed his down on the table. Mentally, he tried to keep himself from not drifting off to sleep again, Jean thought back to the reason why he’d settled for this class in the first place. This wasn’t his first choice of elective, and definitely not his choice of time. He only took this class for one reason.  
  
“Your coffee Jean,” A voice right next to him stated.  
  
     Bribery.  
  
     Detaching himself from his comfortable position, he grabbed the warm cup from his friend’s hand as he settled in beside Jean. Taking a gulp of the caffeinated drink, he’d hoped to wake up faster this way. He glanced at the being next to him.  
  
     Marco Bott.  
  
     A little on the timid side, Marco was just an all-around happy guy. He and Jean had been thick as thieves even before their university days. Jean and the Kirstein Family Pack moved from a small town in France to the city of Trost when he was a preteen. He and Marco met one day when Marco was getting bullied in the school yard. Of course, Jean not speaking a lick of English at the time yelled at the other kids in French and started throwing rocks at them. The heathens that were kids thought he was casting some kind of evil spell on them and made a run for it. In what little broken English Jean did know, he asked if the dirty, freckle faced child was alright and as the said child looked up with a grin on his face, he opened his hands. The small butterfly inside landed on Jean’s head.  
  
     Years later, and his English substantially better, Jean and Marco applied to the same college and electives. His mother tongue only prominent when taken by surprise. The hint of an accent still there but less noticeable as time goes on. Though when his maman calls him, which is every weekend, everything comes back full force. And it’s not mom, or mother, it is maman because even though we are here, she’s from there and Maman Kirstein will not have it any other way.  
  
     Placing the cup down, and thanking the lord for caffeine, Jean was about to make an effort for an actual greeting and conversation when a loud bang went off in the room.  
  
     Nobody moved, terrified of the noise that permitted the quiet of the classroom. For a split second, Jean allowed himself to think back to his dreams and what the bangs usually meant. With a scared resolve, he slowly directed his eyesight down towards his chest, half expecting a red stain to appear on his white shirt. With a shaky hand, he reached up and rubbed his sternum when nothing appeared and no pain followed. His heart rate spiked when he saw Marco hunched over the side of his chair, the unthinkable forming in his mind.  
  
     Afraid of what was to come, Jean moved his hand to his friend’s shoulder.  
  
“Marc…o?” A quiet whisper was all he was able to get out as he made contact with his friend. The sound of blood rushing in his ears.  
  
“Yeah Jean?”  
  
     Marco sat up and faced Jean as if nothing out of the ordinary happened. If Jean were to calm down, he’d see that nothing did happened. The pencil that Marco had dropped when Professor Hange Zoe made her noisy entrance was in his hand once more. It wasn’t a gun going off. It wasn’t the sound of either one of them getting shot. It wasn’t either one of them dying like in his dream. Because if Jean were to be honest with himself he’d admit that he has dreamt of his friends before. He’d admit that he’s dreamt of them even before the war dreams started. He’d admit that he’s even dreamt about his professors every now and then. Especially recently. But he doesn’t want to. Not right now.  
  
     Right now, Jean wants nothing more than to be back in his bed. At home, while his maman made her famous omelet for him. Instead, he picks up his coffee incentive and takes a massive gulp, not caring if he’s burned the inside of his mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, geez, I've been gone for almost a year but then I got an email about someone commenting on this story and so I was like well why not try giving this a whirl one more time. So here it is, the everlasting part 2. Man, I have a long way to go...  
> So, looks like I'm back

**Author's Note:**

> Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated yo


End file.
